


The Blood Incantation

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Charlus Potter/Dorea Black Potter, Background Fleamont Potter/Euphemia Potter, Dimension Travel, Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Potter Family-centric (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-30 12:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19853347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: AU. It’s 1972. Charlus Potter has been part of a secret strike force that managed to put down Lord Voldemort permanently, but at a heavy cost, including the lives of every other single Potter. Desperate to keep his family alive somehow, Charlus summons the ideal heir—and gets a stranger named Harry Potter from another world where the war extended much longer. Slowly, warily, Harry and Charlus become a family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably have three parts, and is another of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics.

Charlus stood in the middle of a ritual space so vast that most other wizards wouldn’t recognize it for what it was. He’d turned the whole of his ancestral grounds into the summoning circle. Flowers planted at strategic corners of the gardens, the shattered wands of his family members buried in other places, the earth soaked with his blood at three successive full moons, the channeling of ten years of life force into the altar…

He shuddered just to remember the preparations. But now it was ready, and those preparations were going to prove their worth.

Charlus raised his wand and closed his eyes. His mind filled with the faces of Potters: his own father Jack Potter who had defied the wizarding world to live mostly in the Muggle one; his dear wife Dorea; his cousin Fleamont, who had teased and smiled and been a formidable duelist; Euphemia, Fleamont’s wife; and James, their son, who had been high-spirited and laughing.

Well, he had laughed until the Dark Lord Voldemort had ambushed the Hogwarts Express on its way to the school in what should have been James’s first year and killed everyone except the children of his followers.

Charlus let the pain and the loss rush through him again. That had been the impetus that wizarding society had needed to band together and bring down the upstart, even using Divination to find and destroy his Horcruxes.

But that, and the fighting that had ensued before and after, had ended many wizarding families altogether. Charlus still didn’t understand why he had come through practically unscathed when Fleamont had been the better duelist.

And Dorea, who had known so many Dark Arts spells…

They had slaughtered her like a sheep. Literally like a sheep, strewing her entrails around the ritual site for him to find.

Charlus faced the north of his ritual circle, where the shattered pieces of Fleamont’s wand lay buried, and shouted, more than incanted, “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who can fight as well as my cousin!”

The fire that ignited on the north side was a brilliant, stinging blue. Charlus stood there long enough to acknowledge it, then turned and faced the south side.

“Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has as fierce a spirit as my cousin’s son!”

The fire this time was an ever-shifting green. Charlus would say that it reminded him of the color of the Killing Curse, but nothing ever would again—not grass, not a stormy sky, and not this fire. The Killing Curse looked like nothing but itself, flying across a battlefield.

Charlus turned to the east. “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has struggled through as many grievous things as my cousin’s wife!”

The white flames that erupted from the ground roared and made Charlus flinch back. But a flinch wouldn’t destroy the ritual. He breathed in deeply, and for a moment, thought about the Potter he would be dragging across dimensions, and the family he might be leaving behind who would need him.

But it didn’t matter. Charlus had walked the first steps of this course. He would persist. He would not turn back.

Now for the west, and the words were choked back in his throat by the tide of grief and longing. Once again, it didn’t matter. Charlus waited until the moment when he could actually speak them, and the three fires burned on steadily. The ritual wasn’t complete until the fourth one.

“Bring me an heir to the Potter family as comfortable with the Dark Arts as my dear Dorea!”

The fire that at once rose into the air was purest black, and the only one to scorch the ground. And it was the first one to reach the height it needed to be, although spikes of flame at once shot up from the others as if they had only been waiting.

Charlus watched as the fires joined together high above him, forming the four sides of a many-colored dome. Magic was being torn from the earth, ripped from the buried shards of his family’s wands, and from him. The few friends who had guessed his intentions had told him not to do this particular ritual, had warned him he was so old that his heart might give out.

But the crushing pain in his chest was nothing compared to the seeking power he could feel reaching out, across the universes, straight towards the right heir, who would be a Potter by blood in his own world and would serve the family the way he must here.

If Charlus _did_ die in the seeking, the magic of this particular ritual would hand his memories on to his heir, and ensure that he knew why he had been summoned and that he would do what he could to recover the glory of the Potter family.

 _But I would prefer to be alive,_ Charlus thought, no longer having the strength to keep his eyes open, as he fell to his knees and heard his heart falter in his ears. _I would prefer to know him, to guide him, to help him get comfortable in the new world he’s been stolen to—_

The roar of his heart blended with the flames in his ears, and everything was ripped from him, and the world spasmed, and Charlus’s consciousness with it.

*

“What the fuck did you _do_?”

Charlus blinked his eyes open slowly. The voice was British, male, and he didn’t know it. That might be a good sign that the ritual had worked the way it was supposed to, or it might not. He rolled over slowly, getting an elbow beneath him.

A lit wand promptly jabbed the soft skin beneath his jaw and stopped him. Charlus met the man’s eyes as evenly as he could. They were a brilliant green that increased his worry. No Potter from any family line he was aware of had ever had eyes like that.

“I know that I’m not in my world anymore.” The man didn’t move his wand or change his tone. It remained calm and even. But Charlus could hear the pulsating rage in the back of the man’s voice. It would break any second now. “I want to know why you brought me here. _Now_.”

Charlus drew a long, slow breath. “What is your name? Please, believe me. It’s important. It’s possible that I might be able to reverse the ritual and put you back if it didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”

The man studied him a little longer, then said, “Imagine, a world where no one knows my name. It’s Harry Potter.”

 _It worked. Holy Merlin, it worked._ Charlus picked up his wand, and Harry promptly tensed and jabbed his own back in again. Charlus said, “My word as a wizard that I’m only casting a _Lumos_ Charm. It’s too dark to see your face now that the fires have burned out.”

The man let him do it, but remained so tense that Charlus wondered if he was long dead in Harry’s world. There was no guarantee that they were of the same generation, or close enough to remember each other there. Or maybe the darkness was just getting in the way of Harry’s eyes, too.

The _Lumos_ flared through the night, and revealed more brilliant green—the man’s robes, which were fine, fancy dress robes, as though he’d been on his way to a ball when Charlus summoned him—and the messy black hair that had marked generation after generation of his family. Charlus couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face. “My name is Charlus Potter. I called you because our bloodline is almost completely dead in this world, and I needed an heir.”

“And what is that to me?”

Charlus’s mouth fell open a little. He’d never heard of someone disdaining the family they were born to that way. “You’re Harry _Potter_. You don’t care that your family is about to die out here because they were fighting against Voldemort?”

Harry settled his shoulders. He had a concentrated wariness in his eyes that Charlus supposed was the result of him calling for someone who had survived grievous things. “My whole family except for me died in my world. Some of them fighting Voldemort, some not. My parents were murdered by him when I was a year old. I grew up to defeat him. I have a world of my own, one that still needs me because it’s in a shambles after years of war.” His voice had started out low, but it was rising now into a rumbling growl. “Put me _back_!”

“I can’t reverse the seeking.”

Harry glared at him with a churning darkness in his face now. Charlus remained calm. He knew the look of someone who would commit casual murder, and Harry didn’t have it. Charlus held out his hand.

“You never knew me in your world, did you? Are you James’s son?”

The mention of James made Harry’s wand dip a little, as Charlus had hoped it might. Then Harry stepped back, sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. That gesture was familiar enough to make Charlus’s chest ache. “Yes. And he married a _Muggleborn_ witch named Lily Evans.” Harry spoke the words sharply, his eyes on Charlus.

Charlus only laughed, which made Harry narrow his eyes. “We’re not blood purists, Harry. We believe in the persistence of family. It would matter if we had a child who was utterly unsuitable to take over the family because of character or magical problems rather than blood.”

“So you would exile a Squib child, then?”

“We would make other arrangements for them,” Charlus said smoothly. That sounded personal. Perhaps Harry had a friend who was a Squib, or believed to be a Squib. The thought pleased Charlus. He just needed to persuade Harry to expand that loyalty to encompass his blood family in another dimension, as well. “But we wouldn’t exile them, no. It’s just that sometimes non-magical children are comfortable in our world, and sometimes they aren’t. We would ask them what they wanted.”

Harry studied him for a second. Then he shrugged. “Better than what some of the people back in my world would say.”

“Help me up, lad, would you? And then you and I should talk.”

Harry hauled him easily to his feet. He wasn’t as tall as Charlus would have expected James’s son to be, but he moved with a warrior’s fluid grace. Charlus tilted his head a little. “Seeker, then?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes.” Then he abruptly bowed his head. “But I’ll never see the people I used to play with again, apparently.”

Charlus put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but said nothing. He couldn’t find the right comforting words right now. He was the one who had pulled Harry from his world, and he couldn’t put him back.

And even if he had known how desperately Harry would miss his world, he would still have done it. His own desperation was no less.

Harry abruptly glared up at him. “I had friends there. I had a _life_. And you think I can just make a life in this world?” He laughed sharply. “Haven’t I lost enough?”

“I don’t know what you’ve lost. Why don’t you come inside and tell me?”

Harry said nothing, but followed him inside. His footsteps were loud thumps that Charlus winced at a little as they crossed the marble floor. Then again, if Harry’s parents had died, perhaps no one had taught him proper manners.

Charlus turned around to see Harry gaping at the high arched entrance hall, with its galleries running around the walls and high crystal dome near the top. “Did you have a favorite room in Potter Place where you would usually sleep?” he asked. “You can have it here, too.”

Harry snapped a glance like a thrown dagger at him. “I’ve never been here in my life.”

Charlus blinked. “Did you have such a rocky relationship with my alternate self and his Dorea that you would never be invited over? Where did you grow up?” he added, because now that he thought about it, maybe his alternate self had died when Harry was young, too.

“I was raised by Muggles. My mother’s sister and her husband.”

Charlus only stared. He couldn’t comprehend it. There was some degree of relation between all pure-blood families in their world, and those families were both mostly fond of their relatives and fond of snatching power. They would have wanted, at the very least, to raise a child with Harry’s obvious resilience and magical gifts so that he would respect their values and continue their family, even if they didn’t have any personal affection for him.

“This is going to take a lot of telling, won’t it?”

Harry gave him a smile that had less of an edge than before, but was still sharp enough to cut. “You could say that.”

*

“You survived Voldemort’s Killing Curse.” Charlus felt dazed in a way that had nothing to do with the fine whisky they were both sipping or the aftermath of the ritual. “And that’s why they called you the Boy-Who-Lived?”

“Yes. Although it was my mother’s love that saved me, really. That, and the fact that I had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in my scar.”

Charlus had to hand it to Harry: he’d timed that revelation perfectly, so that Charlus sputtered a lungful of expensive liquid across the room. From the way Harry’s eyes gleamed, that had been deliberate.

“A living Horcrux,” Charlus whispered, feeling ill. He stared at the young man in front of him. He’d assumed he would summon someone who had grown up practicing the Dark Arts and _that_ was why he was familiar with them, not someone who had literally been a Dark Arts object. “That’s not possible.”

“It didn’t work the way it was supposed to. I got Voldemort’s dreams and emotions and I had a connection that practically gave me visions. But he had another one, too, a giant snake. I can speak Parseltongue,” Harry added casually, and smirked as Charlus choked. “I thought it would go away when the Horcrux died, but it’s still here. Too disgusting and Dark for you?”

“Amazing,” Charlus answered honestly. He did put the whisky down, though. He obviously had to have his attention on the conversation at this point, not on drinking. “It will make you a more valuable heir to our family, not less.”

“Why? Did Salazar Slytherin not have the same reputation in this world as he did in mine?”

Charlus shook his head at once. “Only that Potters are capable of thinking beyond the reputation of magic to seeing the _value_ of magic.”

Harry eyed him as if he doubted that, but only chose to say, “I grew up in the Muggle world, as I said. I attended Hogwarts, but I only really excelled in Quidditch and Defense. Most of my time was spent doing things like investigating whatever Voldemort or his Death Eaters were doing that year.”

“Why do you say it in that challenging tone, with your jaw thrust forwards like that?”

“Because I’m not a genius. I’m not a soldier who was trained to be one. I’m not a diplomat or a politician. The only politics I learned were after Voldemort died, and I had to spend some time repairing our world. I’m not going to be a good heir to your family.”

Charlus rested his cheek against the back of the chair. “Did it occur to you that I can train someone in that, but I can’t train someone to be brave when they aren’t, or to stand up against the Dark if the only thing they care about is learning Dark Arts?”

“I know some Dark Arts.”

“And you throw those words at me, when I didn’t say anything about that. Have you been weak enough to become addicted to them?”

Harry blinked. “Is that even possible? I mean, I use them when I have to and there’s no better alternative. Why would you get addicted to them?”

Charlus chuckled, pleased. “There are some people who enjoy the feeling of casting them or the rush of power they get from them so much that they become addicted, yes. I wanted someone who’s comfortable enough with the Dark Arts that they wouldn’t flinch away from the necessity, but not someone who was weak or power-mad. Talk all you like about what you’ve been through, Harry. It only makes you sound more like an ideal heir.”

Harry stared down into his whisky glass. “I got used to doing without family, you know? Blood family. I made family out of my friends.” His hand nearly crushed the glass he was holding. “And now I won’t see them again.”

His eyes gleamed at Charlus from across the sitting room. Charlus only shrugged. “I’ve already told that you I can’t put you back. I’m the only one you know in this dimension. Why are you struggling so hard to alienate me?”

“Because then at least I could leave and go out into a world where no one knows me. You act like you want to use me. It might be better to depart and lose touch with family than to be someone else’s pawn.”

Charlus nodded slowly. That kind of sturdy independence was a trait that his family favored, too, although usually it meant that Potters didn’t allow themselves to be used by _other_ wizards or beings. “I swear that I can offer you a worthwhile life here, Harry. There will be some politics, but I can either teach those to you or take them up myself for the next few decades. I’ve got at least that long to live.”

“And if I said that politics don’t form part of a worthwhile life for me?”

“There are plenty of ways that you can make them such,” Charlus said. “And there will be chances to duel, and to live in wealth and comfort, and to fight for others if you want to do that. I know that I took you from your friends and those you love, and I’m sorry. But I hope you’ll forgive me and embrace this new world.”

Harry was quiet. Then he asked, “What’s the state of the world here, with Voldemort defeated? Did you get all the Death Eaters?”

“No,” Charlus said, smiling a little. It wasn’t in Harry to feel apathy. He would start interesting himself in the affairs of the Potters in this world whether or not he wanted to. But Charlus would do his best to express his gratitude for that attitude instead of being amused by it. “The most influential ones passed themselves off as being under the Imperius. Abraxas Malfoy is still a thorn in the side of the Wizengamot. But they’ll tread more cautiously for a while since they know that not that many people buy their stories, and the ones who do will still be looking for good behavior.”

Harry nodded, his eyes shadowed. “What about Hogwarts? Dumbledore?”

“He stayed out of this war,” Charlus said, a little surprised. He must have played a more active role in the one in Harry’s world. “He offered support services, like healing and shelter, at Hogwarts when needed, but that was about it.”

“Oh.” Harry stared at his whisky again. “He was the one leading the Order of the Phoenix, a vigilante group, against Voldemort in my world during the first war. Maybe it didn’t last as long this time.”

“No, it must not have,” Charlus said quietly. “Voldemort attacked the Hogwarts Express last year and slaughtered all the children that were on it and didn’t belong to his followers. That angered enough of us to bring a quick end to the war.”

Harry choked. “He killed _children_?”

“Yes.” Charlus looked away. “James was just eleven, and he died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Charlus closed his eyes, a little ashamed. That a man he had dragged away from his own world a little while ago was willing to offer those condolences…

Well, among other things, it confirmed that the ritual had made the right choice.

But Charlus wouldn’t voice that perspective. It would sound more than a little self-serving. He turned back to Harry and mustered a smile. “That’s one of the reasons that I conducted the ritual, you know. You and I are the only Potters in this world. A few of the other families are as badly-off, but not many. A lot of them have distant cousins or someone they can pass the family name and heirlooms onto. I don’t.”

Harry’s face cooled, and he picked up the whisky again. “I didn’t get to know my parents because they died protecting me when I was a baby. I didn’t know you or Dorea, either. And my grandparents died before my parents did.” He paused. “What I’m saying is, I’m not going to be interested in restoring the Potter line just because it’s the Potter line.”

“You are the right heir, or the ritual wouldn’t have brought you here.”

“I might be ideal in theory, and still mess everything up in practice.” Harry shook his head. “I never learned to care about the family in that pure-blood way you’re talking about.”

“But you _wanted_ a family.”

“Yes. Of course I did. That doesn’t mean—”

“I can offer you one.”

Charlus thought about saying more, but he had the feeling that with Harry, less _would_ be more. He sat back and watched Harry wrestle with the implications in his own head. Harry would make some of the arguments for himself, and probably come up with ones Charlus hadn’t thought of.

Harry sighed and finally said, “I need to think about it. I’ll give you a final answer in the morning.” And he set down the whisky glass with a final click and stood. “You said that I could sleep in any room in the manor that I want?”

“Yes. All of them are made up for guests, and all of them have their own bathroom. If you need water or something else in the night, call for Elsie. She’s the house-elf assigned to guests.”

Harry muttered something about “Hermione and house-elves,” but he was drooping with exhaustion, and Charlus didn’t expect to understand it. He did go over and stick a hand under Harry’s arm to guide him to his feet when Harry stumbled, though. “There’s a bit of a step down from this room,” he said.

Harry turned and stared at him. “Do you realize how crazy this is?” he asked, shaking his head. “You, my sort-of-uncle—”

“Great-uncle,” Charlus interrupted. It would be important for Harry to keep the family relationships straight.

Harry paid no attention. “Pulled me across dimensions into a world I can never leave, and now we’re talking about how we’re somehow going to become a _family_.” He snorted a little. “Ridiculous.”

“More ridiculous things have happened. There’s even precedent for rituals like this, and accepting the heirs they pull into this world as the real thing.” Charlus gently helped Harry down the step and towards the grand staircase.

Harry didn’t answer. He shook off Charlus’s hand after a moment and climbed on his own. Charlus watched him do it, and what he saw in the straight line of his back wasn’t fatal stubbornness.

It was strength.

_I did what I was supposed to do._

Charlus performed the climb to his own room when Harry had vanished from sight, well-satisfied, and slept better than he had at any time since Dorea’s death.


	2. Chapter 2

“Did you make your decision?”

“You’re rude early in the morning,” Harry muttered, dropping into a chair across the table from Charlus. He concealed a yawn behind his hand and eyed the man who had summoned him here. Charlus responded with what he probably thought was an encouraging smile.

It looked weary to Harry.

It had been a shock that he still wasn’t over to be in the middle of walking up to a platform where he would announce his own candidacy for Minister, and then suddenly appear in the middle of a field with ritual fires dying down behind him instead. And there were still parts of his soul that had only now started aching, ones connected to Ron and Hermione, Neville and George and Ginny.

But…

 _No, I promised myself that I wouldn’t think about that,_ Harry thought, and scowled down at the plate in front of him. Toast and eggs appeared there silently, making him blink and glance at Charlus. “Do you have house-elves here who only work in the kitchen like the ones at Hogwarts?”

“No.” Charlus reached with a fork for a bowl of ripe cherries in the center of the table. “I think it’s more that your scowl frightened them.”

Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I still don’t like that you stole me from my world.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

Charlus’s expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry that you had to pay the price. I’m not going to apologize for using the ritual in the first place because, yes, I _do_ need an heir for the family. There are creatures caged on our land that will be let loose if someone not of our bloodline holds it. And there are other considerations, but that was the most pressing one.”

Harry blinked as he dug into the eggs. “You didn’t say anything about that last night.”

“I thought it would across as trying to unfairly pressure you.”

Harry rolled his eyes and kept looking down at his food after that, while the thoughts he’d wanted to avoid bubbled up in his mind anyway.

He’d been working on repairing the damage the war had dealt to his world, he’d told Charlus last night, and that was true. But the damage looked to be increasing, not decreasing. Harry had only announced that he would run for Minister in the first place because, of all people, Lucius Malfoy was a candidate who looked to be doing well in public opinion.

Lucius _Malfoy_. Harry had stared into the eyes of people who had told him they would be voting for Malfoy, and half of them were Muggleborn. When he’d asked why, they had shaken their heads at him and said they wanted to be back to normal.

“Normal” meant not acknowledging the war. It meant acting as though Malfoy had really been under the Imperius, _again_ , and that blood purity was a problem of the past. Given what Harry had heard Malfoy say with his own two ears since the war, he knew that wasn’t true.

Right now, of course, there was no Dark Lord to back up what Malfoy was saying. But he could achieve a level of political power that could make things as miserable for half-bloods and Muggleborns and others as though Voldemort still existed.

Harry had loathed the thought of putting himself forwards for political position, especially since he hadn’t even finished Auror training. But Hermione had told him, with tears running down her face, that there was no one else who could stand against Malfoy and defeat him while still representing their ideas.

So Harry had agreed, because his world had a desperate need. And he’d been snatched away and told he had to work for some different world’s desperate need, instead.

The thought he didn’t want to voice came squirming into his mind:

_This need sounds easier to handle than the other one did._

Harry blinked and focused, and realized that he’d eaten only half the eggs and none of the toast. Charlus cleared his throat delicately across the table. “Is breakfast not to your liking? I can have the house-elves make something else. They were only guessing.”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry muttered, and reached for both his tea and some of the cherries. Another realization was sloshing around inside his head at the moment.

He might be able to keep some of that nonsense from even getting started here. So many people were probably dead as children—Dad, Mum, Snape, Remus, _Sirius_ —but so was Voldemort. That meant he had a chance of building, from the beginning, a structure that didn’t stand on years of denial and weariness of war and desire for a “quiet life” above everything else.

Harry scowled again. Here he was thinking as though what Charlus had done was _reasonable_ and he didn’t mind being snatched away to another world.

_Or I’m living with the hand that I’ve been dealt, which is something that I have a lot of expertise in._

“Harry?”

Charlus was leaning towards him, brown eyes calm and concerned. Harry studied him and couldn’t find it in his heart to hate him, any more than he’d hated the people who wanted Lucius Malfoy elected. (He’d thought they were idiots, but he hadn’t hated them). They wanted normal. Charlus wanted normal.

Maybe, in a place that would have expectations of him as the Potter heir but not the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry could find some kind of normal.

“Yeah,” he said, and put the plate aside, and focused his attention on the man another version of him might have known if this world’s James had lived. “I’m ready to listen.”

*

That wasn’t as definitive a statement as Charlus would have hoped for, but it did make him relax. And it was probably premature to ask Harry to make a final decision, anyway. That would imply that snatching him away from his world really wasn’t a big deal and something he should get over with a night’s sleep.

“Would you like a tour of the house?” Charlus pushed his chair back from the table, and Harry stood. He absently waved his wand as he went, and his fine robes were Transfigured into a set of ordinary black ones.

“Sure,” Harry said with a faint smile. Charlus strode to his side as they walked away from the immense dining room table. It could seat eight and it was a little sentimental of Charlus to keep using it, perhaps, but it was tradition.

“Potter Place has some rooms that even I think are silly and don’t see much use,” Charlus said, getting a slightly stronger smile from Harry. “A sunroom and a ballroom and a room that used to be exclusively for listening to the music of the spheres.”

“Isn’t that an idea in Astronomy that doesn’t actually exist?”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t have wanted to tell my great-grandmother Alice Potter that,” Charlus muttered. Harry grinned at him, and Charlus caught a glimpse of James. Really, once Charlus got over the startling impact of his green eyes, he looked much more like a Potter than he’d seemed to at first.

“So I assume we won’t be seeing them.” Harry looked around as if estimating the height of the dome overhead, and then up the staircase that led to the bedrooms. “Are there wings that are shut up, or are those just scattered rooms in the middle of normal wings?”

“We don’t even have _wings_.”

“Look, this house is big enough to have wings. It looks like another Malfoy Manor.”

Charlus opened his mouth to defend himself, and then caught a glimpse of Harry’s face. The expression of innocence was too perfect to be real. “We don’t have their peacocks. We prefer pheasants and unicorns.”

“Well, as long as they’re not _albino_ pheasants,” Harry said, and started up the staircase. Charlus followed him. Harry was tilting his head back and forth, eyes widening as they caught on the chandelier or, Charlus assumed, on how the staircase twisted.

“You truly didn’t grow up in a place anything like this,” Charlus said. His anger felt slow and dull after the long months of burning it had done over the attack on the Express, but now he felt it start simmering again. “You were deprived of every place that should have been yours.”

Harry shrugged, looking uncomfortable as he turned around again. “I have no idea what happened to you or Dorea in my world. I have no idea if you had children there. Maybe some cousin inherited all of this.”

Charlus chose to say nothing, because Harry was right, and differences between worlds were unpredictable. But he did feel that any cousin who could have inherited Potter Place and never contacted Harry wouldn’t have been worth his name.

They reached the top of the staircase, and Charlus introduced Harry to the library, the two small studies on this floor, and the maze of bedrooms. Harry looked a little dazed as they reached the end of the corridor. “Did you have a lot of guests, or was the Potter family much bigger at one time?”

“A combination of both.” Charlus took a glance into the neat white bedroom that his Aunt Martha had preferred, and shuddered a little at the constellations on the walls. Dorea had been of Black blood, too, but she hadn’t gone anything like so far with the chiming, smiling-faced star decorations. “We used to be larger and we invited friends in for the hunting, political debates, impromptu Quidditch matches, and the like.”

Harry was staring out the wide window at the end of the corridor, which pointed straight at the sunlit fields behind Potter Place. “Oh. Is this—you said something about a sanctuary for beasts that would otherwise get out?”

“I don’t know if I would call it a sanctuary or a prison,” Charlus said, moving to stand behind Harry. The green of the fields faded out into the blue of hills in the distance, the way it was supposed to look. “Do you see that river running near that large oak tree?”

“Yes,” Harry said a minute later.

Charlus nodded. “The river is a magical barrier. It isn’t real water. The beasts we’re responsible for are held behind it.”

Harry glanced sharply up at him. “And you’re absolutely sure that they deserve to be imprisoned there? They’re not being sneered at or looked down on the way the Ministry sneers at or looks down on goblins?”

“Goblins? What are you talking about? Why would we sneer or look down on them? They control all our money.”

“They don’t have large rebellions that a ghostly history professor at Hogwarts is obsessed by?” Harry turned and leaned on the wall, his arms folded.

“I’m less than impressed by the Dumbledore of your world if he never got rid of Binns,” Charlus muttered. “He was exorcised twenty years ago here. And no, although they did rebel until a few centuries ago because they wanted the right to hold wands. Maybe the attitudes towards goblins then were worse. I have to admit I didn’t study that field of history closely. But they won the right to hold wands, and since then, they seem to have been content to ignore us most of the time.”

Harry stared at him, then turned to face the barrier again. “What’s behind there? Dragons? Manticores?”

“Worse than either,” Charlus said softly, his mind turning briefly back to the one time that he’d dared to step through the barriers when he was still young. “They don’t have a form as such, but they’ll manifest in visions if you linger long enough. I’d call them plagues.”

“Why?”

“That’s what they would cause if they got out.”

Harry looked into the distance again. “I wonder why they never did that in my world.”

Charlus shrugged. “It’s perfectly possible that’s another of the differences, and they were never imprisoned at all, or someone found a way to destroy them forever.” He kept his fears quiet that they were probably already out, in Harry’s world. Without someone to accept the responsibilities of the barriers, even if it was just promising that they would have taken them up in the future, the Potter Place in Harry’s world wouldn’t have kept them contained more than a year or two.

“Perhaps.” Harry still looked disturbed as he ran a hand up and down the windowpane. Then he sighed and said, “I’d like to see the rest of the house.”

“Of course,” Charlus said smoothly, and turned towards the grand staircase again.

*

Harry frowned as he walked beside Charlus into the Wizengamot’s Diamond Debating Chamber, which wasn’t something he’d even known existed back in his own world. Charlus had Transfigured Harry’s plain black robes into something in subdued shades of green and gold, but also said that they’d have to get Harry some more clothes.

Privately, Harry agreed with that. If he was in this world forever—

Well, he still didn’t feel as much about that as he should, probably because he was internally reeling in shock and hadn’t comprehended what the loss really meant. But he would need clothes. He would need a permanent room of his own in Potter Place, and to get used to being the recognized heir to a pure-blood family.

_Apparently._

That was honestly the weirdest fucking thing to think about. Of course Harry knew that his father in his own world and most of his ancestors had been pure-bloods, but no one had ever really pressed “what the Potter family means” on him.

“Charlus! Good to see you! And who’s this?”

Harry barely managed not to stare. The man walking towards him was one he’d never seen a portrait of, but he looked unmistakably like Sirius, if with sharper grey eyes and less laughter lines on his face. He had black robes with a bit of silver trim, and he put out a hand to shake Charlus’s without turning his interested gaze away from Harry.

“This is Harry Potter,” Charlus said, “my heir by flame and blood.”

“What?” Orion Black, because it must be him, stopped and switched his stare to Charlus this time. “You didn’t _really_ conduct that ritual.”

“Yes, I did,” Charlus said, and smiled a little. Harry watched with his eyes a little narrowed, hoping he didn’t give anything away on his face that Charlus wouldn’t want him to give away. Then again, he might deserve it. “Come, Orion. You know that I mean my promises.”

“Yes, but I thought you were promising Augusta _not_ to do it…” Orion trailed off and glanced at Harry. “And you’re not resentful about being stolen away from your world?”

“I’m pretty bloody resentful, actually,” Harry said. He enjoyed the way that made Orion blink. “And I don’t know how much I’ll like it here. And,” he added, because if this was going to go the same route of most nonsense with the Black family, he’d prefer to know right now, “I’m a half-blood.”

“Oh,” said Orion blankly. He didn’t seem to know what to say next.

“He’s still someone I’m happy to have at my side,” Charlus announced firmly. Harry had the impression that he might be talking to both of them. “I see Augusta on the other side of the room, actually, and I think I need to clear up some mistaken impressions there. I’ll probably hear you in the debate, Orion.” He turned and guided Harry towards an imposing blonde woman with a firm hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“Please don’t fight with Orion,” Charlus muttered under his breath as he walked. “It’s taken me a long time to convince him that our interests align. Although, to be fair,” and his steps slowed, “it was probably his elder son dying on the Hogwarts Express last year that really convinced him.”

“If he can go through that and still be convinced of blood purity, I don’t want to know him.”

“He’s not.” To Harry’s raised eyebrow, Charlus sighed and amended, “All right, so it still surprises him when he finds talent or power in someone who’s a half-blood or a Muggleborn. But he’s also coming around a lot faster than he used to.”

Harry said nothing. He would swallow back some of his words around Black if he had to, but he also wasn’t going to pretend that he liked the man or supported his views.

He got a lot of interested glances as they walked. Harry looked at some faces, but didn’t see many familiar ones. He was paying more attention to the Diamond Chamber, anyway, which appeared to live up to its name. Its walls were faceted and flashed fire, from what were either actual diamond panels or excellent imitations of them.

There were also long benches arranged around a central, circular table made of what might be a huge emerald, and might not. Harry stared at it mistrustfully. There were shimmers of magic moving in the depths of it.

“Augusta! May I introduce my new heir, Harry Potter?”

“You went and did it now, Charlus. I thought not even you would be so foolish, but you were. Idiot.”

Harry turned around with a start. Yes, Augusta Longbottom looked considerably younger than she had whenever Harry had seen her with a dead vulture on her hat back in his own world. She had a stronger jaw, a different hat decorated with cherries and grapes on her pale hair, and hands folded across her very pregnant stomach.

Harry swallowed and struggled not to avert his eyes. So Frank Longbottom had probably died on the train to Hogwarts, too, which meant Neville would never be born here.

To his surprise, Charlus only smiled. “I’m a live idiot, though, and Harry has kindly agreed to at least stay and work on helping me.”

“You said there was no way back.”

“So he has some fire in him, does he?” Augusta scanned him with critical eyes that looked as if they were the color of steel. “And he’s right, there’s no way back, but you could still have made things very difficult for this fool.”

“Maybe.” Harry met her gaze for gaze. “Voldemort wasn’t defeated so soon in my world. The war went on and on, and although some people survived there who didn’t here, a lot of them still died in the end. If I can prevent that from happening here, I’ll put up with my foolish—cousin.” At least that was a somewhat generic term for what Charlus was to him.

There was a long moment when Augusta paused as though she was choosing a new insult for him, but then she snorted and nodded. “Fine. At least someone might be able to see sense in this damn reflective madhouse.” And she strode towards the table in the center of the room and plopped herself firmly down on a curve of the nearest bench.

“She’s one of your allies, too?” Harry muttered as Charlus nodded to another part of the bench that they should take.

“Augusta is a friend,” Charlus said. “I don’t always listen to her, but I can count on her to be honest and let me know what she thinks of any course of action.”

Harry sighed as Hermione’s face seemed to rise up in front of him like smoke. He took a seat next to Charlus and studied the others. It did seem that most of the women who were here were pregnant, which he supposed shouldn’t be a surprise. Charlus had already told Harry that his wife Dorea had died, and that he didn’t want to marry again.

 _Although marrying someone else would have been less drastic than yanking me across the void,_ Harry thought, with a sigh that he kept to himself.

“Welcome to the Diamond Debating Chamber,” said the man standing at the portion of the table closest to the door. He must be Abraxas Malfoy, Harry thought; he would know that smarmy smirk anywhere. “Before we begin the perusal of the petitions passed on from the Ministry, I notice that we have an, ah, _stranger_ among us.”

“Glad to see that you haven’t gone blind yet due to excessive age, Abraxas.” Charlus leaned forwards, and tapped Harry on the shoulder a little. He’d told Harry he would have to stand for the formal introductions, so Harry reluctantly did. “This is Harry Potter, my heir by flame and blood.”

“Not really,” Malfoy said, as though Harry would disappear like a soap bubble if he dismissed him hard enough. “You would be dead if you’d performed that ritual, Charlus.”

“I fully expect to have heart problems for the rest of my life,” Charlus said calmly. “But I summoned Harry here, and I promised him an introduction to the Wizengamot.”

Harry met Malfoy’s eyes, and smiled. There was a different kind of hatred there than he’d ever seen on a Malfoy’s face. Lucius had tended to look at him if he was a crawling bug; Draco had got infuriated or, towards the last few times Harry had seen him, guilty in a way that made him appear constipated. Abraxas looked as if dirt had assumed a human form and started talking.

“Yes, Harry Potter,” he said cheerfully. “I was the son of James Potter and the Muggleborn witch Lily Evans in my own world. I understand that that won’t happen here, as both of them died or likely died on the Hogwarts Express last year. I assume your son survived, of course?”

Malfoy opened his mouth and then didn’t seem to know how to continue. He finally cleared his throat and said, “Lucius was fortunate enough to survive.”

“Indeed. He must know how to pick his battles.”

Charlus coughed next to him. Harry smiled at Malfoy and sat down. “I understand I have a right to be here, unless you want both to declare that you doubt Cousin Charlus’s word and duel me.” He let his hand rest on his sleeve where his wand rested, and waited for Malfoy’s decision.

Malfoy jerked his head to the side. “The right of the Potter Heir to be here is unquestioned.” Of course, his eyes were all but begging someone else to bring up a challenge.

No one else did. Harry received a resentful glare before Malfoy shuffled the petitions and began in a nasal voice. “The first petition today concerns the right of the families of Muggleborns whose children died on the Express last year to receive compensation…”

*

“It’s _revolting._ ”

Charlus watched as Harry paced back and forth in front of the dining room table. He was completely ignoring the meal the house-elves had brought out, which was fine. Honestly, Charlus didn’t think Harry would appreciate the food if he tried it now. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s one of the reasons that I’m glad you’re here.”

“Because there’s so much blood prejudice on the Wizengamot?” Harry swung around. “You couldn’t challenge that _yourself_?”

“No,” Charlus said, and winced as he watched Harry retreat without movement. “Some of it was because I spent too many years protecting the family interests, and when I did say something that disputed Muggleborns or half-bloods being less than hippogriff dung, no one took it seriously. They thought it was just a political move.”

“And the other times that you did something?” Harry at least dropped into his chair, but he leaned backwards and put his feet on the table.

“I made bargains with some of my allies,” Charlus admitted. At the time, he had felt sternly proud of those bargains, convinced they were the best they could do. Now, they seemed to shrink under Harry’s clear gaze until they were more like stains on the Wizengamot’s annals. “They supported my suggestions or legislation that worked against blood purity, but in exchange for their support, they had me throw my vote behind legislation that—well. It wasn’t blood purist, but it was a pretty shaky compromise.”

“So then everyone assumed those other things you supported were what you really believed.”

Charlus nodded. “They tended to be laws that were more likely to get passed, too, and to make more impact on day-to-day life in the wizarding world.”

Harry stared out the window in the dining room for a long moment. Then he faced Charlus abruptly. “Why did Sirius Black die on the Hogwarts Express? I thought you said Voldemort spared the children of his followers.”

Charlus closed his eyes. “Sirius joined James in the fight. He apparently knew enough Dark spells that he injured some Death Eaters. They lost their tempers and forgot the instructions that said they weren’t supposed to harm Orion’s son.”

He opened his eyes at Harry’s silence to see him also sitting there with his eyes closed. “They must have become instant friends when they met on the Express. That’s what they did in my world,” Harry whispered. “Sirius was my godfather.” He started to say something else, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I want you to know that I’m not going to play the cautious political game.”

“I’m glad.”

“Why, when _you’ve_ done that?”

“Because I was a coward in some ways,” Charlus whispered. It was a struggle to keep meeting Harry’s eyes, but he did it—and in some ways, it was a relief, to confess at last what he had never been able to admit even to Dorea. “I told myself that I had to put the interests of my family before my own beliefs. And I did that even when I could have talked about those beliefs with little cost. I did that when I should have seen, long before Voldemort’s rise, that some of the pure-bloods simply wouldn’t be swayed no matter what, and it wasn’t worth any effort to court them and make them my allies. I became too much like the pure-bloods I despised.

“You can’t do that anyway, because of your heritage. And you have the fire and the courage to persist. Look at you—a few days here, and you’re adapting already. _I_ couldn’t do that. Almost no one I know could. Yes, I’ll be happy to have you represent our family, Harry, and pull the Potter wealth and power back in line with what the Potter ideals should be.”

Harry considered him in silence when Charlus wound down. Then he nodded and said, “As long as you realize that things are going to change,” and reached for the first of the plates Charlus had been keeping under a Warming Charm.

Charlus relaxed, and let the silence persist.


	3. Chapter 3

“Now that we are outside the Debating Chamber, I can handle you as you deserve.”

Harry smiled a little as he turned around to face Abraxas Malfoy. Charlus hesitated next to him, but Harry waved him on without looking away from Malfoy’s squint. Abraxas was probably trying to appear powerful and malevolent. Harry thought it just looked as though he’d lost his glasses.

“Yes? In what way will that be?” Harry didn’t even bother reaching for his wand, and Abraxas flushed. He was at least quick at understanding implied insults.

“A formal challenge to a duel.” Abraxas stalked a step closer and lowered his voice, although not enough to make it inaudible to anyone who wanted to walk up this mostly blank Ministry corridor. “When I win, you will retract your insinuations about me and my son.”

“ _When_. Confident. When _I_ win, what do I get?”

“You won’t win, because you’re wrong and a half-blood.” Abraxas took another threatening step closer to him. Harry only stood his ground, which meant Abraxas ended up retreating with a swirl of his robes. _He really can’t stand being that close to someone who isn’t a pure-blood_ , Harry thought, eyes locked on Abraxas. _A useful weakness._ “There’s no use in talking about your reward.”

“Oh, leave something up to luck and chance. That would give me a better opinion of your intelligence, Malfoy.”

Abraxas reached for his sleeve. Harry did the same thing at the same time, ignoring the way that Charlus briefly leaned against his back. He wanted to obey the formal rules, yes, or he wouldn’t have bothered accepting the challenge, but he was also going to defend himself if Abraxas attacked.

The man restrained himself, barely. He huffed out a breath and glared. “Name your price.”

“You’ll step down as leader of the Diamond Debating Chamber,” Harry said instantly.

Charlus abruptly stepped away behind him. He was probably trying to control his laughter, Harry thought, as he kept his eyes locked on Abraxas’s face. Abraxas was staring in silence, his eyes a bright, stormy grey.

“You can’t require that.”

“Then you can’t require me to stop telling the truth.”

“ _Insinuations!_ Not the truth!”

“We could stand here and debate definitions all day, but I was given to understand that formal challenges to duels require that the one making the challenge sees their opponent as worthy of _honor_. How do you see me, if you’re willing to deny everything from the legitimacy of my price if I win to simple wording?”

Abraxas had a slight flush coming into play on his cheeks now. Harry supposed he had to take it as the equivalent of the kind of sweaty red face that, say, Ron would have had.

Harry breathed softly through the pain, and waited. Abraxas finally pointed his hand at Harry, absent the wand that would have let Harry start dueling now, and snapped, “I accept your price! We will duel to yielding. Name the location.”

“The grounds of Potter Place.”

Abraxas glared once more and turned away. Harry rolled his eyes. He thought he was probably supposed to find the swirl of the cloak behind the man dramatic, but the drama was there in all the wrong ways.

“Asking for the duel in a public place where more people could see his humiliation would have been better,” Charlus muttered.

Harry faced him and saw Charlus recoil at the glare he still wore, which Charlus had probably thought was just for Abraxas. “I didn’t do that for you. I’m going to do this because my political tasks in the future would be a lot easier if he wasn’t in charge of gathering and distributing the petitions anymore.”

“Well, I know that, of course. But you accepted your place as my heir, so—”

“Because arguing and whinging about it would have wasted everyone’s time, including my own,” Harry pointed out, narrowing his eyes. “And I spent the last few days in the library looking at those books about the ritual you used to make sure that you weren’t lying and attempting to keep me here under false pretenses.”

“I wouldn’t _lie_ about something like this! I have more honor than that!”

“So much honor that you kidnapped an heir from another world!” Harry could feel the anger building up in him, burning just beneath the surface of his skin like magma. But he could also feel eyes watching, even if they were probably people who were around the corner at the minute. He didn’t want to have this argument in public. “Come on,” he snapped over his shoulder at Charlus, and started for the lifts.

“I don’t appreciate being ordered around,” Charlus said in a low tone, but at least he said it when he was beside Harry. He probably didn’t want to have a fight in public, either.

Harry snorted. “Get used to it.”

That caused Charlus to walk beside him in offended silence all the way to the lifts, and then during the trip to the Atrium, and then through the Floo connection. Harry ignored that. It seemed there were things they needed to say, things Harry had assumed Charlus had understood and Charlus had probably assumed didn’t exist.

Harry was happy to change his relative’s mind.

*

Charlus winced as he settled across the dining table from Harry and saw the sharp gleam in his eyes. He hadn’t witnessed that anger since the first night he’d brought Harry here through the ritual, and he’d assumed it had departed. It seemed it hadn’t.

“You want me to be an heir to you?” Harry sipped from the cold lemonade that Elsie had brought him, and leaned forwards. Charlus would have liked more table between them at the moment. “Then you’ve got to start treating me like an _adult_ , not a child. Don’t expect me to trust you without any evidence. Don’t think that I’ll do what you want and that’s it. You lost all the rest of your family. Well, I lost my bloody _world._ The future I’d thought I would have. Don’t treat me as though I’m someone you can push around and scold.”

Charlus hesitated for a long moment. “I wouldn’t do that. I know that you’re stronger than that.”

Harry snorted, with a roll of his eyes that made Charlus bristle. Harry saw that right away, of course, and gave him a nasty smile. “But you would still consider it an option if I was weak by your standards.”

“I know what I did was bloody selfish. I still did it. I’ve apologized. What more do you want me to do?”

“ _Mean_ the apology. You’ve been so busy being delighted in what you ‘secured’ for your family that you haven’t seen me as a bloody person!”

Charlus recoiled. But he kept himself from snapping, and tried to see the way the meetings in the Diamond Debating Chamber, and with Abraxas, and with Charlus’s friends and allies, might have unfolded over the last few days from Harry’s perspective.

Yes, Charlus had practically told Harry that he wasn’t allowed to fight with Orion Black despite how offensive he might be. And he’d reacted this morning as if Harry had been the one to challenge Abraxas to a duel, and had done so with the intention of getting rid of him.

Harry couldn’t have known how much Charlus wanted Abraxas out of the Diamond Dueling Chamber, because they hadn’t discussed it. It had been more than short-sighted of Charlus to assume that Harry was doing something devious that would serve the Potter family’s interests, at least on purpose.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“For all of it?”

“I wish I could have left you in your world, yes. Or at least opened up a path to travel from one place to another, so that you could still see them.”

Harry gave a harsh laugh. “There. That’s better. Although you have to know that I would walk down such a path and just not come back.”

Charlus nodded in response and said nothing. He knew that Harry had accepted this as much as he had only because he had no choice, and it was ridiculous to expect him to embrace Charlus’s purposes and the Potter family whole-heartedly.

Harry finished the lemonade with a rough snap of his throat, and then faced Charlus. “Now. Tell me why you haven’t dueled Abraxas before this, if you really wanted him out of the way and you knew that he would probably accept the duel.”

“He wouldn’t have, though,” Charlus pointed out. “There are ways to back out from a challenge and make it look as though you’re still honorable, and he knows that we all hate him. Besides, he trained Orion how to fight, Augusta isn’t a great duelist, and I’m considerably older than he is and have additional heart problems now from the ritual. It’s entirely possible that we could have challenged him and he would have won. Whatever he would have demanded would have cost too much to risk it.”

“Heart problems.”

Charlus shrugged. “I’m in my seventies, Harry. I can still live several decades yet, but I was born with heart problems that meant I had to be careful of how much running or dodging I did. And then I poured ten years of my life force into the ritual to bring you here, and the ritual itself made my heart problems worse. It claimed its price.”

Harry stared at him, face wiped of all expression. Then he shook his head and murmured, so softly that Charlus almost didn’t catch it, “You’re mental.”

“Yes.”

“ _Why_ would you risk that much to bring someone who might have rejected you? Even killed you?”

“I spoke the parameters of the ritual so that that part was unlikely—”

“Answer my question.”

“Because I wanted to keep the Potter family alive and thriving. Because I wanted someone who could help us pick up the pieces after a devastating war. Because I didn’t want to marry again after Dorea died and try to have another child, the way some of my contemporaries are doing. Because I wanted to make sure those plagues stay confined and the sacred responsibility the Potter family has here doesn’t fail. Because I’m stubborn and knew I could try to set up the ritual so that it would bring someone who would accept being here.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think that I really understand you at all.”

Charlus said nothing. Yes, that was probably true, just as he was probably misunderstanding and underestimating Harry.

Harry stared out the window and said, “I don’t want to talk to you for a while.” Then he turned and walked out of the room.

Charlus sighed and went to the library, where he would spend some time revising dueling spells. It wasn’t impossible that Abraxas would break the rules of the challenge about the time he realized that he couldn’t defeat Harry just because Harry was a half-blood, and strike at Charlus in turn. Charlus had to make sure, in particular, that Abraxas didn’t do something that would strain his heart.

*

“I’m going to defeat you, little boy.”

Harry said nothing. He was looking around the Potter garden, making sure that the limitations of the dueling ring were clearly visible. Charlus had warned him that Abraxas might try to run if he started to lose.

 _When he starts to lose,_ Harry thought, and faced Abraxas. The man held his wand lightly between his fingers. His expression had changed again. Now he looked more the way Lucius probably would, disgusted and detached.

Harry bounced his wand lightly in his hand. The fury in him had finally come to life, past the numb shock of finding himself in this world. He could look at Abraxas Malfoy and see the seeds of the destruction that had been wrought here, and would come to full flower if he was allowed to go on promoting it.

The bloody destruction that had been the reason Harry got pulled here in the first place.

“To yielding,” said Abraxas, maybe because he’d caught some glimpse of the fury that was animating Harry now.

“Yes.” Harry smiled. He was going to enjoy this. He didn’t bother to glance at Charlus, who stood on the other side of the dueling ring, which was marked out with a glowing white line in the dirt. He might look worried. He might look triumphant, since he and his allies had been seeking a way to defeat Abraxas for years and now Harry was the one handing it to them. Harry honestly didn’t give a fuck. He was going to beat this man and have _fun_ doing it.

Abraxas tilted downwards in a weird way that it took Harry a minute to recognize. He was bowing. Harry bowed back without taking his eyes from the git’s face.

Abraxas, of course, cast from the middle of his bow. Charlus roared something about dueling etiquette, but Harry honestly couldn’t have cared. It just meant he was freer to break the rules when it came to things like the kinds of spells he’d cast.

The Bone-Breaking Curse flew off to the side as Harry’s shield batted it away, and then Harry flung his first hex. He’d chosen it carefully. Abraxas blinked for a moment when it landed, perhaps because it didn’t have an immediate effect.

Then a loud sound came from the direction of his arse.

Abraxas made an outraged noise, but he did keep up his shield, which spoke to more skill than Harry had thought he’d have. Harry smiled and watched as the man’s bowels squirmed and twitched and released more loud sounds.

“What are you doing, Harry?” Charlus shouted from outside the circle.

Harry ignored him and circled off to the side, rejoicing in the difficulty with which Abraxas turned to face him. He knew that the man would probably yield right away like the coward he was if Harry showed him lots of superior skill. And Harry didn’t want that. He wanted to burn off some of this fury that he carried around.

So make it humiliating, and Abraxas would be all the more reluctant to yield because his pride was on the line.

A second later, the Cholera Hex took full effect, and Abraxas uttered a loud cry. Then he cast a purple zigzag of light Harry had never seen before at him.

Harry rolled out of the way. The zigzag, however, bounced off a tree near the edge of the dueling circle and came right back at him.

 _Nice,_ Harry applauded mentally, and met it with a Shield Charm that he threw up with careless ease. There was a flare of light, both purple and gold, and the Shield Charm dissolved—but it took the curse with it.

In the meantime, Abraxas was rolling on the ground as he emptied himself at both ends. Harry laughed. He only had a moment to enjoy it, though, because Abraxas finally managed to end the hex and climb back to his feet.

Harry met him with a round of grooming charms. Abraxas ruined whatever spell he’d been trying to aim at Harry when he shrieked as his eyebrows were suddenly plucked, his ear hairs came flying out, and his chin was freshly-shaven.

“Come on, then,” Harry said. “Really. This is taking long enough as it is.”

Abraxas was nearly hissing with rage as he cast some spells that presumably cleaned himself up and soothed the pain, but Harry didn’t care. He had nothing on Voldemort. And his rage wasn’t dead yet.

“ _Caeco_!”

 _Shit._ The Blindness Hex took effect from the caster’s wand, without giving the victim a chance to shield. Harry could remove it in a minute, but he was sure that Abraxas wouldn’t give him that minute.

Harry promptly blew up the earth at his own feet.

As the grass and dirt hurtled through the air, Harry rolled to the ground behind it. He could hear Abraxas casting frantically, but it was obvious the man couldn’t see him. Harry touched his wand gently to his temple and murmured the countercurse, and his sight flashed back into being.

To confront Abraxas, who had dashed around the edge of the earth fountain and looked elated to find himself standing while Harry was on the ground at his feet.

Not that that mattered so much, not if what Harry wanted was a clear shot at Abraxas’s feet and legs. Which he did. Harry whipped his wand in a fast circle and thought the next incantation with a feeling of vicious satisfaction.

The curse tangled around Abraxas’s legs like a bolo, and he went sprawling to the earth. At the same moment, his toes started to writhe and grow, Transfigured into tree roots as they sought water.

“Look at you,” Harry crooned as he stood up again. “All covered with _mud_.”

That drove his opponent mad, as Harry had thought it would. Abraxas leaped back to his feet and then cast with a fury that might actually have done something if Harry wasn’t in a fury himself, and more skilled. The curses came in a blizzard that Harry had to work on countering, rather than following up with the next humiliating spell.

But when Abraxas tried to move a step closer to Harry, he fell. His feet were by now firmly sunk into the earth, and the change was spiraling up his legs, bark replacing his skin. Abraxas clawed at his skin for a moment before he managed to reverse the Transfiguration.

 _That might be even more effective than mere bodily humiliation,_ Harry thought, and began to smile. _He can’t stand the thought of being something other than an arrogant pure-blood sod of a wizard, hmm? Well, let’s give him a chance to see how the—_

Harry’s wand stabbed out, and he shouted, “ _Equus_!”

\-- _other_ half _lives._

The human Transfiguration wasn’t one that Harry had practiced a lot, which was why he’d had to cast it aloud. Abraxas was still too slow to get out of the way, especially given that his toes were the last things to change back to human. Harry laughed aloud as he watched the man’s arse swell and push outwards, and then a long, silky blond tail fall from it. At the same moment, his legs bent and crooked and acquired hooves, and a whole new pair of legs sprouted from underneath his chest.

Abraxas looked down at the centaur he had become, and screamed.

Harry laughed again. “I’m not an expert in human Transfiguration, you know,” he told Abraxas with great seriousness. “It’s possible that you might never recover your human form. No matter how hard you struggle. Transfiguration is tricky like that.”

Abraxas was clutching at his own withers, staring in horror at his tail as it swished. When his hooves stamped, he likewise whirled around as if they had a life of their own and he wasn’t moving them. The intense fear on his face made Harry wonder for a second if he’d go mad.

Instead, Abraxas threw his wand across the ground, until it bounced off the glowing side of the dueling circle, and screamed, “I yield!”

“You’ll step down as the leader of the Diamond Debating Chamber?”

“Yes! Yes! I yield! _Change me back, Potter_!”

Harry concentrated on willing the change, since he didn’t remember the specific countercurse for this particular transformation. He thought it wouldn’t work for a bit. Certainly Abraxas remained a centaur long past the point where Harry had thought he would begin to become human again.

But then his arse began to shrink—apparently, this Transfiguration was going to start from where it had begun, instead of creeping down in reverse like the tree one had—and then his tail vanished. Abraxas collapsed to the ground as his front legs vanished, and he buried his head in his arms, weeping.

Harry watched him without remorse. True, Abraxas might be a worse enemy after this point, but he had already been someone who was ready to hate Harry just because of his blood, and who had at least been complicit in the slaughter of a train full of children. Harry would be more than ready to pull out this memory if he did try to be a nuisance in the future.

Abraxas didn’t seem inclined to stand up or stop crying, so Harry rolled his eyes and banished the dueling circle, then stepped out of it and nodded distantly at Charlus. “Are you going to order the house-elves to take him back home, or should I?”

*

Charlus couldn’t take his eyes from Harry. He hadn’t cast a single Dark curse—human Transfiguration wasn’t considered to be that if it could be reversed—but had made Abraxas break in a way that Charlus knew he would never have managed himself.

And he was asking a question.

Charlus blinked and focused. “Elsie!” The house-elf appeared and gave him a questioning look. “Please take Mr. Malfoy to the gates of Potter Place and stay with him until he’s capable of Apparating.”

Elsie nodded and snapped her fingers, floating Abraxas behind her as she trotted towards the gates. Charlus faced Harry again slowly. He froze when he found those burning green eyes fixed on him.

“I could do that to you, if I wanted,” Harry said. “I probably wouldn’t, because it takes a lot of time for the anger to build up like that. But it also wouldn’t take as much time to build up as normal, considering that you _kidnapped_ me.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlus whispered. He didn’t know what to say. He had never seen anyone fight like that. And it also humbled _him_ , considering that he, or Orion, or even Augusta, might have defeated Abraxas if they’d been willing to think creatively about the kind of magic they used against him.

Hell, Charlus had known himself the kind of horror that Abraxas felt about being less than clean and less than human. He was said to have stopped talking to one of his own cousins who had married a half-Veela. Charlus could have used that as a weapon. It had never occurred to him.

“I’m going to help you for a while,” Harry continued. “I’ll focus on making sure those plagues are contained or destroyed, and in finding _someone_ who has a trace of Potter blood who can be your heir. And then I’m going to do my damnedest to find a way back to my own world. That ritual might not have any known exceptions _now_ , but you didn’t think Abraxas Malfoy could be defeated until tonight, did you?”

Charlus shook his head, still mesmerized. Harry gave a short laugh and ran his hand through his hair.

“I gave up because I thought it was hopeless,” he muttered. “But I was just in shock. Now I can feel things again.” He started to walk towards Potter Place, and then glanced back at Charlus with a frown. “Are you coming or not? It’s not too late to start research in the library tonight, and you know how the books are organized.”

Charlus glanced towards the gates, where he could still see a smudge of white from Abraxas’s robes, and then followed his terrifying heir. He had to admit the solution Harry proposed would be fine with him, as long as the plagues the Potters were responsible for containing wouldn’t burst out on an unprepared world.

If Harry could go home, it would be for the best in the end.

And until then, if he was slightly dazzled and following Harry rather than guiding him into assuming the duties of an heir as he had envisioned…

Well, it was a way to atone.

And damn if he wasn’t proud.

**The End.**


End file.
